Janice Cottrill, Ohio Woman, Illegally Evicts WW-II Vet Father From Home, 91-Year-Old Must Raise 125,000 To Save Own Home

By Staff Writer | May 15, 2013 05:42 PM EDT

A World War 2 vet is fighting to prevent his daughter, Janice Cottrill, from evicting him from his own home. John Potter, 91, of Zaleski, Ohio, was very sick in 2004. He gave his daughter, Janice Cottrill, his power of attorney rights.

Janice Cottrill used her father's power of attorney rights to transfer the deed on his home to herself. The home is a one-story house that Potter built by hand himself 56 years ago. In 2010, Potter learned of the transfer and immediately transferred

power of attorney to his granddaughter, Jaclyn Fraley.

Janice Cottrill and her husband Dean served her father with an notice earlier this year. The notice said his "existing lease" had been terminated. Fraley, now 35, hasn't spoken to her mom or stepdad in two years, ever since she learned of their plan to sell her beloved grandfather's home and place him in a nursing home.

"I laid awake at night trying to figure out what in the world I could have done to these people to make them so angry at me," Potter told a local news station.

Potter fought against the Japanese in the Pacific during WWII and, after the war, worked as a train dispatcher for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad.

Potter has undergone legal battles to attempt to get his home back. He tried to sue, arguing his daughter transferred the deed illegally. Initially, he won a county court ruling, but an appeals court overturned it, saying that the statue of limitation had passed. It had been more than four years and thus, the court said, the deed couldn't be transferred back.

An eviction hearing will take place in less than a month, on June 12. Later this month, on May 23, Potter will turn 92 and his granddaughter said she'd like nothing more than to give him back his own home as a birthday present. She's launched a campaign on GoFundMe.com, a crowd-sourced fundraising site. She wants to raise 125,000; thus far 40,000 has been raised

Fraley told press that her grandfather and mother have also battled over visitation rights for Potter's autistic son Joe, for whom Cottrill gained custody in 2008.

'John Potter just wants to live what remaining life he has left in the home he built with his wife, in which he raised his family, and has lived for the last 56 years,' Fraley wrote on her GoFundMe site.